The first big hurdle has been taken by Google and Motorola Mobility. The European Union has given the green light for Google to proceed with its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The EU will, however, monitor the deal and its outcome for potential patent abuse. Update: And there we go, the US DoJ has approved the deal as well. Update II: The just-linked DoJ report also approves the Nortel patent sale to Apple, Microsoft, and RIM. I'm hoping for lots of fireworks here so the patent system blows up in Google's, Microsoft's and Apple's faces, so we can point and laugh about all the money they wasted.

No, it doesn't. Whether a non-essential patent is of extremely high-quality, novelty, and invention or not does not change the fact that I think using standard-essential patents as weapons (either proactive or in "self-defense") is far, far worse. So attempting to disparage one or more bad patents doesn't change my logic in the least.

You seem to be misunderstanding me: you are making a value judgement based on the quality of the patent itself (a standard essential patent must have some utility, must have required some research vs. a "joke" patent that you think anyone could have come up with with zero effort or intelligence). I am making a distinction solely between using standard-essential patents as a weapon versus using the non-essential patent as a weapon. No matter the quality of either, I would think using the standard-essential patent as a weapon would be far worse (and again, whether it is proactive or "defensive"). So... by my thinking the standard-essential patent could be a "joke" and the non-standard-essential patent could show great novelty, utility, and invention (or vice versa or both being equally obvious or both being equally inventive) and using the former as a weapon would be worse -- because it would be destructive to the entire notion of a worldwide, agreed-upon standard. In other words, the quality of the patent is far less relevant to me because it pales in the shadow of whether or not it is standard-essential or not.

"My point is: arguing about licencing terms and whether they're FRAND is easier than arguing about patents themselves and establishing whether they're valid or not and whether you violate them or not."

This seems closer to my point: whether or not you think a patent is of poor quality or not, invalid or not, denying access to FRAND standards-essential patents is certainly a much easier topic to discuss: it is always worse or at least definitely bad.

Moreover, I don't think anyone would be able to make the argument that Apple isn't willing to license standard-essential patents as long as they are offered on FRAND terms.

"The scale of the latter is just that much bigger because you have to repeat the process for every single joke patent you're getting sued over, therefore it is more damaging."

While it's true that the subset of patents deemed essential to a standard is certainly smaller than the superset of all patents, good or bad, essential or not -- it is a very real threat that you could have to argue standard-essential patents over and over again. In fact, that is the case: Motorola is demanding 2.5% on the overall sales price of "infringing" products FOR 4 PATENTS ONLY, but they have many more standard-essential patents that they can drag Apple or anyone else back into court again for, for ANOTHER 2.5%!! And new patents can be added to the standard at any time...